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Tetum Spell Checkers

This section is for access and development of Tetum spell checkers and general purpose word lists. These lists are designed for use by spell checkers (and similar tools). The current list is beta level having yet too receive much general use or critique.

You comments and input are encouraged. If you don't agree with a particular spelling (or indeed many) or have extra words you would like to include please mail the project <tetum-translators@nongnu.org >.

Currently there is only one word list for use with Aspell. A spell checker of extremely high quality. So the first thing you need to do is install Aspell for your platform or distribution.

The intention here is to keep Tetum lists for Aspell5 and soon for the new Aspell6, please be sure to install the correct version for your Aspell.

About aspell-tet

The Aspell tetum list(s) were originally developed by this project with timely and enabling help from Kevin Atkinson (Aspell Project Leader) and Kevin Scannell Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Saint Louis University.

For the linguists among you both developers work in interesting areas. Aspell's engine utilises meta-phones and other linguistic techniques and Kevin Scannell has developed some fascinating tools for building Corpora of languages (and other Natural Language Processing tools).

On behalf of the Tetum project I would like to thank them for their high quality help.

Getting Aspell and Aspell Dictionaries

The latest stable version of GNU Aspell is 0.50.X. You can find it under ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell at a GNU mirror site or always from the main GNU Aspell Website . You will also need to download at least one dictionary which you should find at the same locations,(for many languages) and / or (Latest Tetun only) from here. Of course, you may try your package management system first :)

There is a very good chance that you already have a current version. Most GNU/Linux distributions include it, and many other writing tools. To check this you only need run the command:
$ which aspell
or
$ aspell -h

Download A Tetum Dictionary (word-list) for Aspell

Tetum For Aspell Version 5
Aspell-Tet-0.50.1-0.Tar.Bz2 [ 33kilobytes ] md5sum [ 62bytes ]

Click on the link and use your browser to download the selected version.

Please note the actual location of these packages may change at any time.

Installing an aspell-tet Dictionary

Please Check Your Version Of Aspell: (example)

$ aspell -v
@(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.50.5)

Download a tetum dictionary for your version of Aspell to your hard disk drive.
Then:
From a command line, and within the download directory, unpack the tar-ball like so:
$ tar jxvf aspell-tet-version.tar.bz2

The name of the file you downloaded replaces: aspell-tet-version.tar.bz2 .

If that fails try: $ tar xvf --bzip2 aspell-tet-version.tar.bz2 (and upgrade your version of TAR)

$ cd aspell-tet-version/
Read the README file (at least).

$ less README

The README should contain install instructions.

To install using your default Aspell try this:

$ ./configure

$ make

This next step with root or administrator permissions.

$ make install

Your done.
(all going well).

If things did not go well: reread the README, run configure with the --help tag only and see if that clears things up. If you are still having problems drop us a line:< tetum-translators@nongnu.org >

To use your new tetum word-lists when checking files from the command line try:
$ aspell --master tetum check filename-to-check.txt
There may be a Usage.hints file with the tar-ball and this page, which may be helpful.

Installing Aspell

If your not going to work on the code to Aspell itself or develop and test new dictionaries, the easiest thing to do is use your distributions packaging tools to install Aspell. (It may well already be installed). So apt-get install aspell ( or whatever you normally do ).
Instructions for Installing Aspell itself are best obtained from the Aspell website(s).
Generally it is recommended you install away from the directories your distribution manages for you. A common and well supported location is under /usr/local/. Please ask for help if you do not understand this.

TODO

how to use Aspell with your <insert application name>(users)

how to write a new dictionary (for developers)

how to add to an existing word-list (for users)

Send us your personal word lists file (for both)

How To to have spelling corrected or words removed from the list (for both)

A formal dictionary To TL Dili standards ? (probably another dictionary altogether)

Pointers to Graphical User Interfaces


Peter Gossner
Last modified: Sun May 30 01:44:33 CST 2004